


Roll for Initiative

by failedcharismacheck



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Characters play D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, M/M, Rose is the DM, finn is a paladin bc he is the Most Good, this is silly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failedcharismacheck/pseuds/failedcharismacheck
Summary: The gang plays D&D. Finn and Poe's characters keep saving each other's lives, resulting in romantic tension between characters & players alike.Here you go, niche audience





	Roll for Initiative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italics are DM narration, not sure if that was clear or not. Also if you're a hardcore d&d person, don't @ me about rules stuff I got wrong, I don't care

_As your party of adventurers moves forward through the tunnel, the space widens and the stone ceiling slopes higher and higher. You enter into an underground cavern. It's cold and smells of stagnation. You continue inward and see the skeletal remains of livestock picked clean, as well as a few armor-clad humanoids who seem to have met the same fate. The sound of your footsteps echoes off the rocky walls. Suddenly from above you hear the terrible, monstrous screech of the wyvern you've all been sent to slay. It sets its eyes on you and dives down, teeth and claws bared._

"Roll initiative, nerds," Rose says, followed by the sound of four dice skittering across the table.

Finn never really expected to spend his free time playing pretend with a bunch of other adults, let alone that it would sometimes be the highlight of his week. But here he is, seated at Rey and Jessika's kitchen table with his paladin's character sheet and more dice than are strictly necessary scattered in front of him.

"The wyvern is first in the initiative. Xander Wingpilot," Dungeon Master Rose addresses Poe's half-elf ranger. "Since you were the first one it saw, the wyvern swoops towards you. Make a dexterity saving throw."

"Plus two from Aura of Protection," Finn reminds. "Because of your amazing paladin friend."

"My best  _pal-_ adin," Poe says, smiling wider than that jokes deserves and earning noises of disgust from the whole table. He doesn't seem to mind. He reaches for his twenty-sided die, the glittery orange one he claims is somehow lucky.

"Please give him disadvantage for that pun," Rey groans from across the table. But that isn't necessary, because Poe rolls a total of four.

Jessika shakes her head. "The Dice Gods are punishing you for your very bad jokes."

" _Pun-_ ishing," Finn's mouth says reflexively, against his own will.

"Speaking of punishing..."  _The wyvern manages to grab onto your ranger before he can wriggle out of the way. It takes off into the air, high up towards the ceiling of the cavern, with Xander dangling from its claws._

"What does Xander do?" Rose prompts.

"Since I'm in melee while it's carrying me, I take my hunting knife out of my boot and stab it."

Rose raises an eyebrow. "You're sure?"

Poe hesitates, hand half raised to roll his dice. That's never a good thing to hear from the DM. "Yes?" He lets the dice drop to the table.

"The wyvern cries out in pain and takes damage," Rose narrates. Before Poe can celebrate his small victory, she continues, "It instinctively releases you from its grasp and you end your turn plummeting through the air towards the stone floor of the cave."

"Oh, shit." Poe drops his head down onto his character sheet with a soft _thunk_. "Didn't think that one through."

"I'll have Healing Word ready in the unlikely event that you survive the fall damage," Jess promises, half teasing and half reassuring, as is her way.

"Rook," Rose addresses Finn's character. "You're up. What do you do, adventurer?"

Faced with the possibility of the party's survivalist dying one of the less heroic deaths available to an adventurer, Finn answers, "I run and try to catch Xander. I use my Dash action if I have to."

"Make an acrobatics check."

With Poe's pretend life in his hands, Finn rolls. "Natural 20!" The table breathes a collective sigh of relief. Poe claps his hand on Finn's shoulder and if Finn leans into the touch a little, well, that's just enthusiasm for the game.

_At the sight of his friend falling towards certain death, Rook leaps into action. You sprint and perfectly time the impact to break his fall, sending the two of you rolling and skittering across the floor to land in a tangled heap of leather and plate armor._

"Though both of you take damage. Finn, from having the weight of an adult male half-elf land on you, and Poe, from being that adult male half-elf. And you're both Prone. But neither of you are stains on the cave floor, so congratulations. That ends your turn." She nods towards Jessika. "You're up, bard."

Jess leans back and cracks her knuckles. "Roxanne the Facemelter is gonna do what she does best."

"Melt faces?" asks the rest of the table in unison.

"Melt faces," she confirms. "I'm gonna play a sweet Orcish folk-metal riff on my Fantasy Electric Guitar and cast Fireball out of it." Jess likes to play it fast and loose with the medieval fantasy setting. And rules. She holds her dice out for Rey to blow on for luck, which she does after a half-hearted eye roll and a smile.

Roxanne deals a significant amount of fire damage to the wyvern's face, living up to her title, and Rose does her best impression of a melted-faced, dragon-like creature screeching in pain. It's Finn's favorite part of this game, getting to watch his friends be so unabashedly, adorably dorky.

Tano, Rey's elven druid, is next and final in the initiative order. With the list of her druid spells laid out in front of her, she says, "I'm going to attempt to Entangle it so it can't fly anymore."

_You point your staff at the monster and through the power of your druidic magic and attunement to nature, a series of thick vines spontaneously break through the rocky cave walls. Failing its saving throw, the wyvern finds itself ensnared by the newly grown vines, pulled to the ground and wrapped tightly with its wings trapped against its body. While it can still move, it is rendered flightless._

Rey and Jess high-five, and Finn assumes their characters do too.

"And we're back around to Poe's turn."

"I cast Cure Wounds on Finn," he says immediately. The creature that nearly killed him just moments ago, now grounded and much more vulnerable, seems to go unnoticed.

"You have to be touching him to do that," Rose reminds.

"Right. I put my hand on Fi-- I mean, Rook's cheek because it's the only part of him not covered in plate armor." Finn's not sure if the handbook specifies touch as skin to skin contact in this context, but he says nothing and neither does anyone else. "And I say, 'Thank you for saving me from certain splattage.'"

"'It's not a real adventure until someone has a completely unnecessary near-death experience,'" Finn says, as his character but as himself as well. Poe laughs and Finn celebrates internally for making that happen. "'I'm glad you're not dead.'"

"'Me too, thanks to you.'" Poe bumps his shoulder against Finn's. "'You're a good man, Rook.'"

Finn smiles. "Neutral Good, to be specific."

_And with the healing touch of the ranger's hand, Rook feels the bruises from Xander's rough landing begin to magically fade away._

"And then they kiss!" Jess interjects.

"They don't kiss," Finn says, though truthfully he certainly wouldn't mind if they did.

"They passionately make out," Rey corrects. Finn rolls his eyes. He probably shouldn't have let his real-life crush on Poe seep into their characters, he thinks, but it's too late. Rook is more than a little smitten with his half-elven party member, though he hasn't admitted it. It might be due to the fact that Finn pictures Xander looking exactly like Poe but with pointy ears.

"I'm just saying, there's tension there, fellas," Jess says, gesturing between the two men. Finn's mostly sure she's talking about their D&D characters.

"This isn't that kind of role-playing game," Rose says, her tone that of a Dungeon Master desperately trying to get her party back on track, yet she can't seem to keep herself from laughing a little. "Poe, do you use your movement to get up or are you just going to stay laying on top of each other for the rest of this fight?"

"I stand up," Poe says quickly.

"Me too," Finn says, now that it's his turn. "And I take out the Saber of Light and I use Divine Smite on the wyvern." He rolls his attack die, a marbled blue and silver that Rey bought for him because it looked "paladin-y".The party cheers when he rolls high, as the Dice Gods seem to be in Finn's favor tonight.

_With Divine Smite causing your blade to hum and glow even brighter with radiant energy than usual, you move towards the creature with purpose. On instinct, it tries to fly off but its wings strain uselessly against Tano's vines. In its agitation the wyvern lunges toward you, but before it can cause you any harm you swing your Saber of Light in a wide arc, slashing through the tough scales on its neck. A deafening roar of rage and pain echoes through the cavern._

"It's still alive but bloodied and lookin' rough," Rose says. "Fuck it up, adventurers."

And that they do. With Jess & Rey's spells, Poe's arrows, and Finn's enchanted sword, it's not long before the wyvern is defeated. The ranger and druid work together to harvest usable parts of their fallen enemy as proof of their success. The paladin begrudgingly allows his more morally flexible teammates (namely the Chaotic Neutral orc) to loot gear from the bodies of the wyvern's past victims. "They ain't using 'em," Roxanne the Facemelter had argued.

Using his skills of navigation, Poe's ranger leads them safely out of the underground caves and back to town, Finn's glowing sword lighting their way. There, the party regroups with their employer, the leader of a group of farmers terrorized by the now-slain monster.

"Thank you, thank you! Ever since that beast appeared our town had not known peace!" Rose says in an implacable accent she may have invented on the spot. It's hard coming up with new voices for every character the party may meet. "What do we call you? In case we should ever need your help again?" Glances are exchanged around the table. They hadn't decided on on name for their party yet.

"Roxanne and The Boys," Jessika answers, followed by a three-person chorus of "No."

"We're still workshopping it," Rey/Tano explains to the villager.

"Roxanne and the Roxettes," she offers again. "Roxy Rox and the Funky Bunch."

_The grateful townspeople put you up in their finest local inn. The place is humble but cozy. Healing Words and Lay on Hands are distributed to those hit by teeth or claws or tail. You finally relax after a long, long day, satisfied with the feeling of a job well done and the weight of coin in your pockets. Roxanne the Facemelter offers questionable party names until you each finally retire for the night, ready for whatever adventure tomorrow may bring._

"And that..." Rose snaps her Dungeon Master's Guide closed. "Is where we'll end tonight's game."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this silliness. I also have an [art blog](http://fridaseyebrow.tumblr.com) if you wanna see me be obsessed with star wars and rpgs but in drawing form


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